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No bread is an island

...entire of itself. (With apologies to John Donne!)

I live and breathe breadmaking. I’m an evangelist who would like everyone to make his or her own bread. I want to demystify breadmaking and show it as the easy everyday craft that it is. To this end I endeavour to make my recipes as simple and as foolproof as I possibly can.

I call my blog 'No bread is an island' because every bread is connected to another bread. So a spicy fruit bun with a cross on top is a hot cross bun. This fruit dough will also make a fruit loaf - or Chelsea buns or a Swedish tea ring...

I'm also a vegan, so I have lots of vegan recipes on here - and I'm adding more all the time.

About Me

Torn away from the bosom of my family at the tender age of 18 - and never lived in my home town of Blackburn again. The RAF took me to HK; After a hitch of four years I emigrated to Australia and joined the RAAF, which took me to HK where I met my wife of 43 years. I then joined GCHQ which took me (us, with 2 children now) back to HK. Retired at 55, trained as a teacher of adults, gained a 2:1 in Teaching and Training at Plymouth Uni (which I thought went well with the 2 'O' levels with which I left school). And I've been teaching breadmaking ever since. Now running 6 or 7 classes a week, plus the odd Saturday workshop. My passion is breadmaking - or perhaps I should say the teaching of breadmaking; I'm also very interested in early development; And I like to cook - but I consider myself to be pretty average. I have a wife, two children, a daughter-in-law and a son-in-law and three grandchildren, (who can all make bread) who come and stay with us in the holidays and half-terms. Away from my family, I'm happiest teaching a Family Learning group, with parents and children, none of whom have made bread before. I get a real buzz out of turning people onto breadmaking.

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Tuesday, 21 February 2017

VEGANISM: Reason Nr. 1 - Animal welfare

(There are two other good reasons for going vegan - Global warming and health. I shall post about these as soon as I can - and I'll link to them from here. Necessarily, some of these links cross the boundaries, but I've tried to separate them out as much as I can.)

I was a vegetarian for 2 years - for health reasons - before I transitioned into a vegan. It took me two years for the blinkers to fully come off. Prior to that I’d been a meat-eater for 63 years, with the blinkers fully in place.

There is more and more evidence emerging of the inherent cruelty involved in the livestock industry - here I'm going to present some of it. Much of it comes from the US, but we have our own tragedies over here.

"...with the number of land animals slaughtered every year reaching over 50 billion - plus incalculable numbers of sea creatures."

There are some truly inspirational animal activists around - here's James Aspey, one of the most remarkable. Another is Gary Yourofsky, who is perhaps more 'in your face'. (Video starts 20 mins in - you'll need to slide it back to the beginning.)

Here are the top 10 vegan documentaries - each one with its own trailer.

There's more - much more. Do your own research. If you still want to eat meat and meat products after wading through all these links - then please don't call yourself an animal lover!